


get what you deserve

by provocation



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic Bliss, M/M, Underage Drinking, Wendigo Josh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9890222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation
Summary: ohwhatanight asked for the prompt “I don’t want to be alone right now” with Mike/Josh!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohwhatanight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwhatanight/gifts).



“I don’t want to be alone right now.”

They’re seventeen, and it’s two in the morning, and Joshua Washington has depleted Mike’s entire supply of soft drinks and chips. Mike feels like he should be moderately annoyed by that, since this is the first time he’s ever actually hung out  _alone_  with Josh. They’ve hung out in  _groups_  before, with Hannah and Beth, Chris and Sam, Jess and Emily. Tonight, the whole cast had turned up— Matt had won his first football game, and they’d all gone to Mike’s house to celebrate the victory. 

Mike was initially confused by the choice; Josh’s place is bigger, Emily’s place is nicer, Christopher’s is closest to the school, Jessica’s place has a dog. But for some reason, they’d ended up here, scattered around Mike’s basement. Detritus from the party is still strewn over the furniture and floor; just from where he’s sitting, Mike can see thirteen different red cups and Emily’s sweater hanging over the back of the couch.

“Oh, shit,” Mike says, rocking up to his feet. He walks over to the couch, picking up the sweater. It’s soft and maroon, and warm in his hands. “Em forgot this here.”

“I bet she didn’t,” Josh slurs, and uses his vantage point on the couch to reach his leg out and poke Mike’s thigh with his toes. “I bet she forgot it on  _purpose.”_

Mike moves out of Josh’s reach. “Why would she forget it on  _purpose_?”

“Because Em  _liiiikes_  you,” Josh sings, and gives him a shit-eating grin. His smile is distinctly feline, although that could be a side effect of the one drink Mike’s had. Josh fumbles for his phone, retrieving it from his pocket and then squinting at the screen. “OK, well, Beth texted that she’s on her way to pick me up, so you don’t have to babysit my drunk ass much longer.” Josh tries to get to his feet, and knocks over a bowl of Cheetos. They tumble to the ground, and neither of the boys notice.

“Wait, wait wait wait,” Mike tries to disguise his panic as the desire for gossip. He wrinkles the sweater in his hands, suddenly overcome by frantic energy. “You think Emily likes me?”

“Uh, yeah, bro,” Josh snorts, and sits back down. (To be fair, he never really got up.) “Why else would she have left a [designer sweater](https://www.aliceandolivia.com/oatmeal-bre-longsleeve-crewneck-dropshoulder-pullover.html?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=43737&utm_campaign=8-9069&utm_content=1885545854) here?”

“Huh.” The sweater doesn’t  _look_  designer, it just kind of looks like oatmeal, but Mike knows very little about fashion. “Do you think I should go for it?”

“I don’t know.” Josh shrugs, strongly giving off vibes that he could not care less about who Mike dates. His eyes are glued to his screen. “Beth’ll be here in 20.”

“Hey, um,” Mike begins awkwardly, scratching his neck. “You can sleep here, if you want. I set up an extra mattress in my room just in case anyone wanted to sleep over, so… if you want to save Beth the trip?”

Josh breaks eye contact with his phone to look over at him, and Mike steadies himself against the back of the leather couch. He and Josh run in the same circles, but they don’t really know very much about each other at all. The role of best friend is already taken, and Mike knows better than to try and unseat Chris, but some part of him would still like to get to know Josh. He doesn’t want to be friends-by-proxy, he wants to be  _friends_. He also doesn’t like the idea of sleeping alone on his floor; the idea of Josh sleeping next to him is much better. Maybe Josh can come join him in his bed, and then—

 _Wow_. That one drink must be affecting him more than he thought.

“She’s already on her way,” Josh muses, and maybe Mike misheard earlier when he thought Josh was slurring, because his voice is low and thoughtful but not wasted. Mike isn’t sure if his imagination is making the words sound apologetic, or if Josh is pitying him for the offer.

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” Mike murmurs, and his nails dig into the leather.

Josh watches him for a long moment— too long— so long Mike thinks Josh is going to call him out for being  _needy_  or  _weird_  or  _not straight_ , but then he nods and looks back down at his phone. “Sure, dude.”

 

-

They’re nineteen, and it’s 4:23 in the morning, and Josh is rocking back and forth desperately. “Don’t scream,” he mutters, and Mike doesn’t think Josh is talking to him at all. “Don’t scream, don’t blink, don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t don’t don’t! Don’t you dare. Not— a—  _peep_ , or I’m coming to getcha!”

Josh starts straining against his bonds again, and Mike wants to reach over and pat his shoulder or something, but he’s pretty sure Josh’s shoulder is already bleeding  _and_  he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to comfort a murderer. “Snap out of it,” he barks at Josh, which he knows is wildly unhelpful. “Your prank is over, asshole.”

The shed is drafty, and Mike’s ass is cold against the straw, but this is by far not the worst part of his night. Every time he closes his eyes he sees Jessica in that mineshaft, so he stops closing them at all. He doesn’t look over at Josh, who they’ve tied up to a pole supporting the shed’s structure. He thinks he might explode of anger if he looks over at Josh right now. So instead, he just stares at the door, silently willing Chris to come back through the door and relieve Mike of his sleepover duty.

He stares at the moonlight filtering through the wooden cracks, feeling exhausted in every way possible. He watched Jessica get taken, and he tried to follow her, but he couldn’t manage it. He saw her  _body_ — her  _dead_ body, thanks to Josh. Mike finally blinks, stricken with grief. He feels like tearing his own eyes out to stop his phosphenes from tricking him into picturing Jessica.

“Ha!” Josh croaks triumphantly. “You blinked.”

Mike glances over at Josh, who has gone limp against his bonds. He’s tempted to leave the shed, but he wouldn’t want Josh trying to wriggle his way out of the shoddy bonds they’d put him in to go and cause more trouble. Kill more people.

 _Tight little body_  bounces around Mike’s skull like a line from a song. A real earworm. He thinks about Jess calling him her hot B.O.D., and then he closes his eyes tightly. He needs to stop thinking about Jess— not here. Not until he can pay his respects properly.

When Mike opens his eyes, Josh is staring at him, and Mike explodes.

“How could you  _do_ this to us?! You  _dick,_  y-you fucking  _nutjob,_  how could you  **play** with people’s  **lives** like this; how could you  _kill someone_? I trusted you, you fucking asshole!  _Jess_  trusted you!” Josh tries to interrupt Mike’s barrage of anger, bleating again that he doesn’t remember killing Jess, but Mike pays him no mind. “ _Sam_  trusted you! We all thought you wanted to  _grieve_ , to  **heal**! You just wanted to set up your— your  _sick_  revenge plot! You think Beth and Hannah would have wanted this?!”

It’s like a switch is flipped in Josh’s head; suddenly his scared delirious doe-eyed look twists into something  _feral_  and  _ugly_  and  _furious_. “No, no, no, Michael,  _you_  don’t get to tell  _me_  what Hannah and Beth would have wanted. You don’t get to sit there on your high, on your high horse, and pretend  _you_  aren’t guilty in all of this.”

Mike’s hands are tensing beyond his control, and he sees red. “ _I didn’t kill Jess!_ ”

“But you killed Hannah,” Josh says, and suddenly Mike’s heart plummets like a stone in a lake. He can feel it sinking down, and Josh can see it on his face. Josh’s scowl turns into a smug smile, one that Mike wants to wipe off his face. “ _You_  started all this.”

“I didn’t—” Mike starts, and then stops. There’s no point arguing with Josh. Not while he’s like this. “Whatever. We can fight about this in the morning, when you’re on your way to jail.”

“This is so much worse than our last sleepover,” Josh whines.

And whatever Mike’s response would have been is suddenly cut short by a scream from far away. He instantly goes alert, jumping up to his feet. Even if Josh recognizes the voice, Mike isn’t paying attention to him any longer. “ _Em—_ that’s— that was Emily!”

“Mike,” Josh begs, suddenly sounding terrified. “ _Mike_.”

“We’ll discuss this when I get back,” Mike shoots at Josh without looking over his shoulder. He strides to the doors to the shed and pushes them open, wide-eyed with fear for one of the few people he’d die for.

“Michael, don’t— please, no, don’t go! Mike! This is bad, bro,” Josh says, head spinning both physically and physiologically. “ _Please._ Mike.”

The doors slam shut behind Mike, and Josh whimpers, “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

But his plea is heard by no one.

 

-

They’re 21, and it’s six in the morning, and Josh rolls over in his sleep only to wake up to a warm body next to him. He jerks awake, eyes searching the room for  _movement_ , but nobody is lurking in the shadows. The body next to him is intact, and breathing softly, and fast asleep in the middle of a dream about nothing in particular. Josh sees a vintage Die Hard poster on the wall, and a dog sleeping beside the door. He sees his medication on the bedside table, next to a photo of Hannah and Beth smiling.

This is their room, in their apartment, and Mike is next to him.

Mike awakens with a grumble, and Josh realizes he’s digging his nails into Mike’s shoulder. They aren’t sharpened to  _claws_ ; Jessica had taken care of that long ago, hooking him up with her best salon recommendation. He quickly pulls his hands away, and gives Mike a few inches for good measure. Mike, however, closes the distance between them without even opening his eyes, pressing his lips to Josh’s eyebrow and throwing his arm across his waist.

“Morning, sunshine,” Mike murmurs, voice muffled by the pillow.

“Morning,” Josh replies, and his voice is— maybe a little more  _brittle_  than he meant it to be.

Mike frowns, and his eyes flutter open. They’re already soft with concern, which warms Josh’s heart; or maybe it’s just sleepiness. “What’s wrong?” He looks Josh over as best he can, clearly trying to gauge if he left their bed during the night to cannibalize the neighborhood. “Did it get bad again?”

“Yeah,” Josh mutters, because bad is one way to describe your world slipping into wendigo vision first thing Sunday morning.

“Aww,” Mike says, and his arm curls around Josh. It’s kind of a fuckboy thing to say, but Josh knows Mike expresses affection like an idiot— and truth be told, he kind of likes all the endearments and babying. It’s easier to explain himself when Mike is being an affectionate boyfriend than when he’s being an angry martyr. “Is it a brain thing or a wendigo thing?”

“Wendigo thing,” Josh whispers, and then closes his eyes. He feels lips press against his eyebrow, then his eyeball (his right one), then his nose and his cheek scar and then finally his lips. 

The kiss tastes like sleep, and it’s dry and boring and unexciting. Josh doesn’t think he’s ever had a better kiss his entire life. “It’s too early for you to try to eat me,” Mike mumbles into his mouth, and then kisses him again. “You gotta wait until at least eleven.”

He can feel Mike’s smile against his lips, and it’s impossible not to smile back. “Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The title is from [First Things First](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjeUf715A_A) by Neon Trees, which is a great Washingroe song if you feel like putting yourself through agony. This was posted on tumblr first, for a [drabble meme](http://montparnasse.tumblr.com/post/157561204357/48-and-washingroe-b) requested by my wonderful cheerreader Parker. Once again, I swear I will stop posting oneshots and update The Cave soon... I _promise_! I just always think there needs to be more Mike/Josh content in this fandom. If you liked, loved, or loathed this, let me know! ♡


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